


to sleep, perchance to dream

by fredesrojo



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: 5+1 Fic, F/M, Post S2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredesrojo/pseuds/fredesrojo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Will watched MacKenzie sleep, and the one time she watches him.</p><p>Starts pre-series and runs through the timeline up through 2.09</p>
            </blockquote>





	to sleep, perchance to dream

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely inspired by Sufjan Stevens' instrumental album "The BQE" which you should all go listen to because it's the greatest ever.
> 
> Each section is marginally titled after a song from the album, although in no particular order.
> 
> Thanks to Emily for poking me to finish this.

_i. 2006 “ **Movement II: Sleep Invader”**_

_(When he first realizes he’s in love with her.)_

Sleeping is the only time she’s really still.

MacKenzie is usually a whirling vortex of seemingly limitless energy, speeding along five different trains of thought simultaneously to wrangle their show together in an almost effortless way.

But when she sleeps, it’s as if everything has momentarily stilled long enough to give her the rest she claims not to need. 

She’s beautiful when she sleeps. 

Not that he doesn’t think she’s beautiful any other time. 

MacKenzie McHale is easily the most attractive woman he’s ever met in his life, bar none. 

Her inherent stillness in sleep presents a striking dichotomy against the bright-eyed idealism of her waking breaths, and he’s been drawn to it since he first heard her voice in his ear. 

(He’s falling in love with her. 

He is in love with her. 

 _He loves her_.)

* * *

_ii. 2009 **“Interlude I: Dream Sequence In Subi Circumnavigation”**_

_(He goes to Germany after the stabbing.)_

It only takes a few well placed bills changing hands for the night nurse to come find him when the McHales and whoever the scruffy kid that accompanied them leave MacKenzie’s hospital room. 

(She looks so _small_. It hits him like a punch to the gut--pale, almost waxy skin bruised by the IVs, and thin bloodless lips still parted by a ventilator tube.) 

He doesn’t remember much of the trip to Landstuhl, just remembers Charlie’s quiet _Sit down, Will, we need to talk_ in his office, and then the stale air of the airport and then Europe and Germany and _MacKenzie, MacKenzie’s been hurt._  

Her hair is longer, Will registers dimly under the slowed pounding of his pulse in his ears--no longer a thundering pulse of _MacKenzie, MacKenzie_ , her visual presence enough to calm his traitorous heart. 

She’s thinner than he remembers. Not in a sickly way, more toned and lithe. 

 _She was embedded with a few Marine units, Will. It’s been...well, you know._  

Her skin is darker, too. Now that he knows to look for it, the faint wash of a sun-kissed tan shows even under the pale cast the hospital’s fluorescent lights give her. More freckles, too, the few that he can see above the skewed neck of her hospital gown. 

(Even now, injured and unconscious, she’s still beautiful.) 

He thought she was only capable of stillness in sleep before but now he realizes, that was never true stillness. 

This, though, is when MacKenzie is truly still. No movement, just the assisted rise and fall of her chest in time with the hiss of the ventilator and the thready beat of her heart tracked by the monitor’s beep. 

(He can’t see where she was hurt, doesn’t want to see. 

If he sees the site of her purported injury, sees the stitches and the bandages and the skin torn asunder, he’ll forgive her, he might let her back. 

He _can’t_. 

19 months, nearly 20, and he still can’t. 

He won’t. 

He’s not ready to forgive her yet.) 

He sits there all night, tall frame folded into a too-small plastic chair edged just far enough away from her bedside to remove the temptation to cradle her hand in his. 

He sits, and waits.

He is gone by the time the McHales and Jim Harper return to MacKenzie’s room, the only memento of his presence the faintest hints of cigarette smoke and Old Spice--scents which are long since dissipated when MacKenzie finally wakes. 

* * *

  _iii. 2011 **“Movement III: Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise”**_

_(The first time he sees her sleep again.)_

Hurricane Irene is still throwing sheets of rain and powerful wind gusts at most of Manhattan, so more than half of the newsroom chooses to camp out in the AWM building in favor of going home to potentially flood-prone areas.

He stays because Mac is staying. 

(Okay, he stays because the car service shut down hours ago and there’s no way imaginable that he’ll be able to make it back to his apartment in this.) 

They have power, for now, although the newsroom is only lit by the emergency lighting in deference to the scattered pockets of staffers from News Night and Right Now camped out randomly on the floor. 

(Tess, Tamara, and Kendra in one sort of alcove-like corner, Don camped out on the floor of his office, Elliot and some of the Right Now staffers in the conference room, Sloan is...somewhere, Gary and Martin disappeared to the kitchen half an hour ago to forage for something edible--Will’s pretty sure Charlie is even holed up somewhere on the executive floors, probably with an entire bar’s worth of bourbon.) 

Mac’s office is dim when he gets to it--though he’s half expecting it to be lit by the waning glow of her cell phone--and he nearly steps on Maggie, camped out a few feet from the door of her office. 

(Maggie has been more intense lately. Well, not intense, but more...focused. 

Trying to lead her own story, stepping up to help Terry/Harry/Jared/whatever on story pitches. 

Jim went to New Hampshire, Don and Maggie broke up, when did the newsroom become the B-set for Days of Our Lives?) 

He steps cautiously over Maggie’s sleeping form and then through into Mac’s office, squinting in the flashes of light through the windows from the storm raging outside. 

She’s asleep. 

(He’s not really sure what he would have done if she were awake. It’s been harder and harder to deal with unguarded moments around MacKenzie since he found out that she never got the voicemail.) 

It’s hardly a comfortable looking position, hunched forward in her chair with most of her upper body resting on a mostly clear stretch of desk. 

There’s a section of newspaper half smeared with highlighter lines just under her cheek, and she’s going to have an awful crick in her neck when she wakes. 

She’s shivering, restless half-twitches shuddering through her body, eyelids fluttering in what looks like REM sleep.

(Her sleep--it’s not as restful looking as it once was. He’s noticing little things now, changes. 

The MacKenzie that returned from Afghanistan is not the MacKenzie of old. 

She sleeps curled up now, always protective, always anticipating the next blow. Artillery fire, IEDs, bombing raids--this new MacKenzie is accustomed to grabbing snatches of sleep whenever available. 

He wonders if she even manages peaceful sleep in a bed anymore.) 

He can’t stay in here. Things are still too tentative between them. 

Staying would imply too many things he’s not ready to give voice to. 

It’s too fragile to upset the delicate balance they have between co-workers and friends and partners and something _more_. 

He can cover her, though. Gently drape her ACN sweatshirt over her shoulders and retreat back to the relative safety of his own office. 

It’s not his jacket, it’s not a blanket, and for all Mac knows it could have been Maggie or one of the other staffers. 

(In other words, it’s safe. It doesn’t imply anything, leaves no identifying markers, won’t upset whatever delicate balancing act they’ve wrought for this week. 

It’s not emotional attachment, it’s not forgiveness.) 

* * *

_iv. 2012 **“Movement V: Self-Organizing Emergent Patterns”**_

_(He doesn’t want to leave her alone after they retract Genoa.)_  

She’s pretty drunk. 

(They all are. The night needed to end on some sort of upward note, even if said note was only to be found at the bottom of a martini glass. 

 _We have to retract Genoa tonight. All of it._  

Never in his adult life has Will seen such an egregious breach of journalistic ethics.) 

He’s not exactly comfortable getting her into her bed once they get to her apartment building, but her couch is giant and comfortable looking enough that he thinks she’ll be able to sleep, mostly. 

He stays because it’s the most broken he’s seen Mac since-- 

 _Billy, please, I can explain, just let me explain, **please.**_  

(Better not to think about it, really.) 

Mac sleeps curled up tightly, knees almost against her chest, arms curled protectively in front of her. 

There’s a wrinkle in her brow--he thinks it’s probably only going to become more prominent as they navigate through the wake of the retraction--that draws her features up tight, and even now she still twitches in her slumber. 

The peaceful stillness from before is gone now. 

She’s not peaceful when she sleeps, as if she’s warring against her very thoughts. 

(They’ve both changed so much in the interim that he’s not even sure anymore if their edges tessellate, jagged gaping wounds jutting up against one another. And it’s only going to get worse.) 

He can’t stay the whole night, obviously. Perhaps before, but now--MacKenzie is only comfortable showing vulnerability under situations of her making. 

Especially after tonight--he needs to go home, and prepare for the inevitable. 

Will considers leaving a note, something ( _but what would he say? What can he say?_ ), but in the end it’s only her phone and purse, the throw blanket on the back of the couch cautiously lowered over her body. He’s even more careful slipping her heels off, leaving them with the pile near her door, and slipping silently out of her apartment feels more tawdry than anything else. 

(He’s not sure why, it just does. Like he’s done something and now he’s sneaking away before morning light wakes the city.) 

The taxi ride back to his apartment passes mostly in thought ( _what are they going to do now? How do they fix this? Is it even possible?_ ) and he spends the rest of the early morning hours in the space between sleep and being awake--they’ve got to formulate a defense, a plan for going forward. 

(They’ll all get fired, probably. 

He’s never been one for optimistic thoughts.) 

Mac looks just as tired as the rest of them when he finally makes it into the office, and no words are passed between them. 

(He doesn’t know what to say anymore. They’ve both changed so much.) 

* * *

_v. 2012 **“Movement VI: Isorhythmic Night Dance With Interchanges”**_

_(She owns him.)_  

Perhaps there’s something to be said for sharing a bed with someone. 

(Not someone. One specific person. MacKenzie. 

His fiancee. 

 _They’re going to be married._ ) 

It’s the first time in years he’s watching her sleep from directly next to her. 

They slipped away from the Election Night/engagement/whatever celebrations and tumbled together into a cab and then to his apartment ( _Take me home, Billy_ ) and finally into his bed. 

By all rights he probably should be asleep right now--Mac is certainly dead to the world, sprawled out on her stomach, half-pinning one of his arms to the bed where it rests under her waist. 

(The changes don’t seem so daunting now. They weren’t as insurmountable as he feared. 

They fit together almost as if there aren’t six years between meetings and a different apartment and more grey hairs than he’d like to count on his part and scars on hers, countless things that still ultimately add to the same summation of parts. 

She owns him--mind, soul, heart, body, one of the ultimate physical laws of the universe.) 

He traces his fingers lightly down a collection of interconnected scars scattered over her shoulder blade, wondering absently to their origin, and the sleepy sigh of contentment that Mac makes before cuddling closer derails most of his train of thought in favor of shifting closer to curl around her, slowly settling back to sleep. 

( _Yes, I’m saying yes._ ) 

* * *

_vi. 2012 **“Movement VII (Finale): The Emperor Of Centrifuge”**_

_(And the one time Mac watches Will sleep.)_

She’s still not very good at sleeping more than four or five hours at a time. 

(Not that she’s meaning it as a knock on Will’s...abilities in the bedroom. 

He was sweet and thorough and entirely exhausting in the _best_ sort of way, but her body still isn’t wired for what most normal people would consider decent sleeping habits.) 

Mac wakes half pinned under the solid weight of his body against her back, but it’s relatively simple to maneuver out from under his arm and then off the bed to go in search of water. 

He hasn’t moved much when she makes it back to the bedroom, still sprawled out on his front, free arm stretched towards what would be her side of the bed. 

There’s more grey in his hair now (and hers, concessions to age both) and there’s lines on his face that didn’t exist before but his arms fit around her the same way they once did--evidence that things change and yet others somehow remain the same. 

His cowlick only seems to have gotten considerably worse in the interim (although she has a muddled memory of fisting her hand in the back of his hair during their earlier exertions, so the wild bed-head look very well might be her fault) but there’s a soft smile curling the edges of his mouth in his sleep and probably mirrored on her own face. 

(It’s kind of cute, really.) 

This entire night has turned out so differently than she’d thought it would. 

Leona not accepting their resignations, Will almost firing her ( _I’m taking it back, it’s Tuesday, I can’t fire you on Tuesday, you can’t hold me to that_ ), Reese not accepting their resignations, the ring… 

He kept the ring. 

Good God, they’re going to be married. 

(McHale-McAvoy isn’t going to work. She’ll probably keep McHale professionally, but she’s going to be Mrs. McAvoy, at least in the personal sense.) 

Six years to work their way back together finally culminating in this--the two of them together after so long apart, and she worried at first that some sort of karmic hammer of retribution would make them utterly incompatible now, but here they are. 

The diamond in her ring sparkles as she reaches out to fix a few stray hairs strewn across his forehead, the affectionate touch lingering against his temple. Will sighs in his sleep, mumbling incoherently before his grasping palm settles against her knee, the touch relaxing him instantly. 

(Maybe she can sleep after all.) 

He stirs again when she settles against his side, sleep-slurred words mumbled into the pillow. “Kenz?” 

“Sssh, go back to sleep.” Mac lets him turn enough to fold her body into his arms, her head coming to rest just above his heart. 

“Love you,” he mumbles, already dropping back to sleep, and it’s easy enough to follow.

(It was always easy enough to follow Will, or to find her way back to him. New York and Will were always _home_ , no matter how hard she tried to run from them everything would inevitably circle back. 

She’s going to be Mrs. McAvoy.) 

“I love you too.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
